it's the leftover humans
by widowmaking
Summary: "It's the tipping point. Steve disbands the Avengers with two wedding bands on his finger and half a smile at two other people who have been in mourning for decades." Even heroes don't live forever, no matter how hard we wish they would. Oneshot. Major character death.


Contains **multiple character deaths** and my weird personal shipping preferences (Steve/Tony and Bucky/Clint/Natasha). Already posted over on my tumblr.

_"It's the leftover humans. The survivors. They're the ones I can't stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail."_

* * *

For a long time it's perfect.

Steve and Tony fight like dogs, hold hands in grey fields, press kisses along each other's jaws in darkened rooms. Steve and Tony are Steve and Tony, diametrically opposed and perfectly balanced and hopelessly outmatched by each other.

The rain pounds a drumbeat against the nearest window pane and it's a cold Sunday morning when Steve proposes, tangled in the pale sheets with the man he loves clutching to his arm like its his anchor. Will you marry me? He asks, because he's been raised right and his only regret is not finding a ring flashy enough. Though something seems just right about the way Tony slips the band on his finger and chokes back a smile and says yes of course he will.

* * *

No one expects Clint and Natasha, the way they pull and tug at each other like gravity. Two wonderfully dangerous killers engaged in a deadly game of give and take (and take and take and _take_.)

In Prague, she shoots him in the knee to drop him, watches a bullet pass where his head had been moments ago, lets him fuck her against the hotel sink.

'Fuck you.' He's all curses and grunts and she can just about ignore the press of porcelain against her spine when she catches his lips and smiles against his gasps.

'Only because you asked so nicely.'

Because this is what they are; him bleeding from the knee and her pulling him back from the edge in a hotel bathroom in Prague. It's gritty and broken but both of them have _earned _it.

* * *

They find him bleeding from a head wound in Reykjavik, shuffling through the streets like a pale wraith in the snow. Steve calls him Bucky, Natasha calls him James and Fury secures him in an underground facility for months until the man no longer answers to Winter Soldier.

He's caged fury and a deep longing and a dead best friend, long buried. He's a lover and a promise of a better life and the first whisper of snow in a Russian winter. He's deprogrammed but still has something deadly wrapped around his spine. Still wakes up retching from the memories.

Clint breaks his nose without much preamble on a sparring mat, calls him a little shit, has Steve breathing down his neck for weeks while Natasha smiles like something deadly into the back of her hand.

Bucky thinks that maybe the future ain't half bad. And it's been so long since he's had not half bad.

* * *

It's sappy and overdone and bordering on the melodramatic. Summer hangs low in the air when they exchange vows and Pepper Potts won't admit to crying to anyone who asks. James Rhodes says a speech that just about floors the reception and James Barnes makes Steve blush bright crimson with his.

For a long time it's perfect.

Because they're two sides of the same coin. Though Captain America and Iron Man fight like cat and dog, tooth and nail for every moment they have. They don't say anything to each other when the press put an expiration date on their marriage.

* * *

No one expects Clint and Natasha and _Bucky_.

For a while it's earthquakes and bloody lips and whispered threats in back alleys, faces pressed to ears, spines flattened on dirty brickwork. For a while it's quiet jealousy and stolen moments between missions and _how long can hate hold a thing together?_

It holds like bandages and tape hold a wound and the cracks smooth over with time and it's so broken it's almost beautiful.

Because Bucky knows Natasha in ways Clint never could and Clint knows how to fix broken bodies and broken hearts (practice on your own wounds will do that to a man) and Natasha knows how to soothe them both when the ghosts catch up with them in their sleep. No one expected it, but somehow no one can remember what life was like before it either.

* * *

They gather on a dark Wednesday, some nine years after Steve and Tony marry (it's the first time they've all been together since then though no one thinks to mention it) to burn one of their own.

Clint never quite knew how to slow down or when to dodge the bullet. Clint never quite learned to stop taking hits for others. Clint would never know how pretty his body looked sprawled in the mud, his life as his last gift to the Avengers. His last gift to his family. And if no one mentions Natasha's tears, the set of Bucky's jaw, well that was just being good friends.

The ashes fly free from cold hands atop Saint Steven's Basilica and when Tony asks about Budapest, Natasha spins a tale of a man called Clint Barton who saved her life in more ways than one.

* * *

It's a decade later that Tony Stark collapses on the floor of his lab and never gets back up.

It isn't until three weeks later that he dies. In years to come Steve calls those the best and worst weeks of his life. But he never leaves Tony's side and the man who has everything but nothing dies with his lover's hand in his own and the only family worth mentioning by his side.

The funeral is small. Steve chokes out a speech with twin wedding bands wrapped around his finger, Bucky's hand clasped against his shoulder. Rhodey sits between Pepper and an empty seat left for a fearless archer.

* * *

No one's sure about how long Bruce would live. Years stop mattering to those left when their lifespan is measured in decades rather than years. It's a slow burn out, the Hulk gets a little slower, a little more docile.

Bruce's funeral is a family affair, with places left for the ones lost already, a barely aged trio of Avengers looking on. It's the tipping point. Steve disbands the Avengers with two wedding bands on his finger and half a smile at two other people who have been in mourning for decades.

Thor doesn't come back after that, his duties in Asgard keeping him away. Natasha figures it's better than way, even as she finds a silver hair on her head.

* * *

Bucky and Natasha die within hours of each other, a bomb strapped to a fanatic and a plane full of civilians. Bucky gives his life in the same way his once-lover did and no one screams louder than Natasha when he hits the floor of the airplane, limbs splayed akimbo, a crimson trail seeping back towards her.

Natasha saves the civilians, dies the hero she never felt she was in life. She thinks that maybe, just maybe, the things she's done for good are enough to outweigh the evil, though no one has ever been more sure than Steve, who attends an empty church full of ghosts for a service that breaks him in every way he can imagine.

* * *

Steve dies on his birthday and there's a finality to it, the ripples shake the whole world, even more different now that how he remembered his youth. His memories are old and faded and sometimes he can barely remember the faces of the men and women he served beside, it's been so long since he saw them last.

He's alone, save for a thunder god from legend, who tells him tales of the bravest heroes he's ever known as he slips into sleep.


End file.
